Fennel Fantastatic, French Toast, and Food Poisoning (Almost)

Yet another month passes by, and the glaring lack of blog posts is apparent to all my faithful followers, and weighs heavier on my mind with each passing day.  The weekly affair that I had envisioned in those early days of naivety has petered out into a semi-monthly occasion.  I know I do this every time I post, but I have to apologise again for letting you all down.  I promised more blogs, and more blogs is what I should have delivered.  To make up for it, this is going to be a super-long blog full of super-awesome dishes.  Please enjoy responsibly.

So what have I been doing this last month?  For the most part I've been working, and I use the word 'working' loosely since most of our day is comprised of sitting at the corner shop sipping lattes and shooting proverbial breezes.  It becomes a disappointment if my registrar and I haven't managed to order our coffees by 11 o'clock, followed closely by a long lunch.  Living in a country town which moves at a country pace definitely has its advantages, and now that Spring has arrived in Wangaratta it's hard not to sit back and enjoy the serenity...so much serenity.

But it hasn't been all coffees at the corner shop.  My kitchen has been a flurry of boiling pots and piling dishes as my country cooking adventures pick up the pace.  It has been a highly productive month full of dinner parties and desserts and fine dining, and one star dish that my co-interns can't stop raving about.  I'm not usually one to hype up my own food, but it was pretty damn good.

But we start with the simplest of the simplest dishes.  After touting my amazing non-stick TEFAL pans in the last post, I felt obliged to give the dreaded omelette another go.  The results will amaze you!

Yes! My perfect 3-egg omelette, successfully slid off my super non-stick pan.  I kept it simple and just put cheese in the middle, but now that I know how easy this is to do I'll start getting fancy with my fillings.  Breakfast will never be the same again.  I lie, breakfast has been the same everyday since.  I just don't have the time to whip up an omelette batter and cook it.  My quick breakfast of choice is Uncle Toby's Plus Omega 3 Lift, a tasty nutritious meal that even your kids will enjoy.  Find it in your supermarket cereal aisle.

The second dish on the menu is a variation of one I've made before.  You may remember me cooking Jamie Oliver's prosciutto-wrapped roast chicken in a tin foil tray.  I really enjoyed cooking it last time, particularly the part where I could throw away the make-shift tray and have less cleaning to do.  Jamie actually features 4 different single-serve roast chicken recipes, and I decided on rosemary roast chicken breast with asparagus and cherry tomatoes in white wine.

 

Not too bad to look at, but unfortunately I did a very naughty thing and didn't cook my chicken properly.  After biting into a very raw and very salmonella-looking piece of chicken, I promptly spat out the bacteria-infested wad in my mouth and nuked the rest of the chicken in the microwave.  Damn these electric ovens and their crazy cooking times.  Luckily I didn't get food poisoning, but I did get a nice colourful picture for my blog.

By this time I was feeling a bit lazy (which is not all that unusual for me) and decided to make a big pot of something or other to last me through the week.  Noting the lack of pasta-based dishes throughout my country cooking adventures I threw together a bolognese sauce from a recipe my mum taught me, which is basically crushed tomatoes and tomato paste, mince meat, garlic, onions, red wine, salt, pepper and sugar, and whatever veggies you want chopped into little pieces.  I also made use of some of the herbs Michelle gave me during my last trip to Milawa, bless her soul.  Thrown together with fettucine, this is what it looks like:

Not great, but not terrible.  I was a bit impatient and didn't let the sauce reduce down into nice, rich, thick loveliness.  I really want to aim for the restaurant quality sauce that looks all creamy and oozey.  Instead my sauces usually turn out wet and runny.  Still I can't complain too much; it got me through a whole week of meals, including lunch!

I returned home for Father's Day weekend, and as has become a tradition in our family my younger sister and I cooked breakfast for the family.  Up until now it's mostly been a lot of pancakes, with a fairly fantastic batch of ricotta pancakes whipped up just this last Mother's Day.  I decided to change things up a bit this time around and searched through my Donna Hay book for some ideas.  I settled upon a delicious looking breakfast/dessert that was also really simple to make.

It's hard to tell from the picture, but those are Dark Chocolate French Toast Sandwiches.  The name alone is enough to make your mouth water and your pancreas shut down for good.  They were really quite tasty, however the dark chocolate really overpowered the french toast, so it felt like we were just eating nutella.  Plus it was super rich.  I recommend a side of bananas or strawberries to accompany this dish, sliced to perfection of course.  P.S. I'm pretty sure my parents enjoyed it, though they could have just been trying to make me feel good.

Delighted with my french toast experience, I returned to Wangaratta filled to the brim with cooking confidence and girlish glee.  I invited my fellow interns over for dinner, with the aim of cooking an awesome lamb rack roast I saw in Donna Hay.  Trundling down to the Woolworth's the night before the night, I discovered that supermarkets don't routinely stock whole lamb racks, which was disappointing needless to say.  Also, the recipe called for figs, but me being the foodie novice that I am didn't realise figs weren't in season.  Plus, as my cousin informed me later, they are really expensive.  I was wracking my brain trying to think of an alternative and decided that apples might do the trick.  The next day I called the local butcher while I was at work (and sipping lattes simultaneously of course) to order a few lamb racks, and by 5:30pm I was all set to start cooking.  Apples chopped, fennel sliced, lamb coated in salt, pepper, rosemary, and garlic mustard from my favourite mustard shop.  A surprisingly short cooking time later:

So to recap: Lamb rack roast on a bed of roasted apple and fennel, with a serving of mashed potatoes on the side for good measure.  Yes, its all just a lot of brown a beige, but this is the dish of the trip so far.  Better than my lamb shanks probably.  The fennel/apple combo worked a real treat.  In fact, one of co-interns keeps asking me to make the fennel/apple and mash potatoes again, she really couldn't get enough.  I have to say I'm quite proud of this one, though next time I'm gonna try and add a bit of colour to the dish.  If you have any suggestions about what I could use, please let me know!

The following weekend I came back down to Melbourne again to hang out with my cousins, one of whom was visiting from Sydney.  Being ever so much more the foodie that I am, each visit from her takes us to yet undiscovered culinary gems hidden from we who have lived in Melbourne practically our whole lives.  Last time she was down she took us to The Panama Room, which had a great atmosphere and very good food which was surprisingly hearty given the young hip chic vibe I was getting from the place.  This time around we went to Pearl restaurant in South Yarra, which got some great reviews in The Age and two hats.  I have to admit though, I really didn't enjoy it all that much.  I think I just can't enjoy "asian fusion" dining, particularly Vietnamese fusion dishes.  When my whole rainbow trout came out all I could think was, "My mum could probably make this."  I suppose the same could be said for other cultures and their traditional cuisines.  You don't really want to be paying fine-dining prices for a home cooked meal.

The highlight of the visit for me was brunch/lunch at Outpost, which coincidentally is near my old high school.  Fantastic coffee and atmosphere, and for lunch I had the Chicken Pot Pie which was delicious.  Commenting on the apparent simplicity of the pot pie we got into a discussion about stews and the such.  I didn't even know where to start making a stew.  Apparently you just brown some meat, throw it in together with chopped veggies and stock and whatever else you like, simmer and thicken with flour to your liking.  It was just that easy!  So why not try it up in Wangaratta?

So for my stew I used bits of mystery beef, onions, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, vegetable stock, red wine, copious amounts of salt and pepper and some bay leaves.  It sat on my stove top for ages, and being the impatient guy that I am I added a lot of flour to speed up the thickening process.  In the end the texture wasn't far off from where I wanted it.  What I didn't like was how bland it all tasted.  I know I didn't have a lot of fancy herbs to throw in there but I didn't expect it to be so tasteless.  The next day I was talking about it with some of the other people and I realised I didn't add any tomato paste or garlic.  I guess the great thing about stew is if you make a big enough pot you can just keep cooking it till you get it right.  After adding the tomato paste and garlic, and some random thyme I found in Michelle's herb garden, the stew suddenly tasted like a completely different dish.  You really need the tomatoes to add that extra bite to the whole thing.  And to complete my stew adventure, I stole a ramekin from home and bought some puff pastry so I could make my pot pies.  I don't think the puff pastry really adds anything to the dish, but it does look better than serving up a bowl of stew with rice.

My final dish is another Donna Hay recipe, or recipes should I say.   Chicken breast cooked two ways: parmesan-coated roast chicken breast and roast chicken breast on a tomato and eggplant base topped with cheese.  To accompany this I decided to make a salad that was suggested to me by, you guessed it, the ever so lovely Michelle at the mustard shop.  I forgot to mention I went back to Milawa on one of my afternoons off and picked up some more mustard, this time opting for the hot honey mustard flavour.  Wondering what might go well with it, she suggested I make a salad with roast pumpkin and spinach and top it all with the honey mustard.  I took her advice and added some roast sweet potato and pine nuts for extra texture.

Both the chicken components of this dish were crap.  The 'parmesan-crumb' that was meant to coat my chicken breasts really just became a melted cheese flavouring.  And the eggplant and tomato base turned into a soggy mess.  The only saving grace was that the chicken was cooked well, or at the very least it wasn't raw, which is lucky since I was serving it to my other interns.  Also, the salad was fantastic.  The combination worked really well, though next time I probably need to dice my pumpkin and sweet potatoes into smaller bite size pieces.

The following day I still had heaps of salad left over and some chicken strips I had cut off the breasts, so I put together a grilled chicken salad for dinner.

To be honest this salad tasted a lot better than the dishes I made the night before.  Sometimes a simple chicken salad is all you really need.

And that finally bring us up to date with all the exciting happenings in my cooking world.  I hope it hasn't been too much of struggle reading through all of that.  I've been writing this blog up over a few days so I haven't noticed how long it is, though on preview it's probably the longest one I've done so far.  Normally I'd finish it here but I wanted to let you all know about all the other exciting stuff that's been happening in Wangaratta.

Living together in a block of flats so close to the hospital opens up opportunities that just aren't available to you in the city.  Like flat parties.  Big drunken flat parties on Thursday nights that somehow end up being in your flat.  Big drunken flat parties with a bunch of rowdy medical students that aren't all too careful with their beer and red wine.  I woke up the next morning to the stench of beer and dude and rotten as.  Actually it was Chance my medical co-intern who woke me up with a phone call 15 minutes after I was meant to start work.  Good times!

I much more sedate news, I discovered this last month that a friend of a friend of mine is working as a dentist in Benalla, which is not too far of a drive from here.  I actually found out after finding her name on a dental review of one of my patients.  What a random crazy world we live in.  We ended up meeting up for dinner and she dragged me along to a swing dancing class that she attends here in Wangaratta.  OK, so she didn't 'drag' me along.  Truth be told, I love dancing, absolutely love it.  I don't care that I was swing dancing in a hall with a group of mostly over 50's who look like they might do a hip if they sway too much.  When I get back down to Melbourne I will definitely have to con some people into coming to dance classes with me.  If you have any interest in it at all please let me know.  I'm putting the call out!

Alright guys that's it.  It's now 11:38pm on my third day of blog writing.  And I've only just realised I've skipped over one of my dishes.  It's too late to add anything now; I'll have to add it on to the next blog.

Whenever that might be.

Milawa, Mustards and Michelle

My oh my.  It's been nearly a whole month since I last posted anything here, and to be honest I have no decent excuses.  Yes, I could say I've been busy saving lives and fighting crime, but the truth is I recently found a streaming anime site and have been watching a show about some Japanese kid who is ridiculously good at American Football.  Yes, it really is as exciting as it sounds.

But I don't want to distract you all with the tales of Eyeshield 21, American Football star.  Instead let me update you on all the goings on that have been...going on.  Some of you may be pleased to hear (but certainly not surprised if you follow my facebook updates) that I've finally left Horsham after my 10 week internment.  And that was not just some clever pun I accidentally used; living and working in Horsham really was quite the ordeal.  No offence to the native Horsham-ians, but I think that place was slowly destroying my soul, much more than MAPU ever did (and for those who saw me during my MAPU days, you know that's saying something).  The only thing that made it bearable was my fellow interns.  Towards the end of our rotation we started going out a lot more, possibly because we were great friends, but I think more because we needed to bitch about the crappy hospital we were working in.

Which leads me very nicely to my next point: I haven't cooked for a very very long time.  With one failure after another my motivation to cook was slowly waning, and the invitation to dine out with the fellas was just too hard to resist.  Plus, I didn't want to buy a whole bunch of ingredients in my last weeks in Horsham only to have it all go to waste.  The only exception to my little cooking hiatus was my effort to make a proper omelette.  Inspired by the Masterchef egg challenge (don't lie, I know you all watched it), I was determined to cook the perfect 3-egg omelette, my dozen free-range eggs at the ready.  Four failed attempts later, I learnt yet another important kitchen lesson: GET A NON-STICK PAN!  My fracking eggs kept fraking sticking to the stupid hospital-supplied non-non-stick pans, and as such no amount of butter or oil could get them to flip over without there being fraking eggs bits stuck all over the place.  Yes I know, a real chef doesn't blame his equipment, but hey, I'm not a real chef, so I'm blaming the mother-fracking pan.

All this talk about omelettes and anime and I haven't even gotten to the exciting part of the blog.  As of last week I am officially a general medical intern at the Wangaratta Base Hospital.  Where is Wangaratta did I hear you ask?  Good question!  Wangaratta is a relatively large country town situated approximately two and a half hours north of Melbourne, just off the Hume Highway as you head towards Sydney.  Having been here before as a student I'm fairly familiar with the town and it's incredible surrounds, including the Milawa Gourmet Food region, the Kinglake wine region, and of course, the Alpine region which I hope to be visiting in the near future to get my snowboard on.  The work is good (sorry surgical people, I much prefer medicine), the other interns are great, and the registrars seem keen to go out as much as possible.  Which is fine with me, because unlike Horsham the restaurants around here are fantastic.  I will put up a list of recommendations some point down the track if any of you ever get the urge to visit.  The most exciting part, however, is my new kitchen!  Sadly, my oven is still electric, but the supplied cookware is exponentially better than what I had before.  I got TEFAL!  No more sticky omelettes for me!  Hopefully!

As I mentioned, I have been eating out a lot more of late.  And while it has been a great bonding experience, it's been distracting me from all my country cooking adventures, and in turn, depriving you of some much needed late-night reading (yes that one was for you Vi).  My spices have been sitting idly on the window sill, my cupboards bare, my fridge filled with nothing more than milk, ham, cheese, and ice cream (I like to indulge).  I was in desperate need of some inspiration.

That inspiration came in the form of an unexpected afternoon off work.  With a relatively short list filled mostly with GEM patients (that's old people rehab for those not in the know), my reg kindly suggested I take the afternoon off and enjoy myself.  With nothing to do and no one to do it with, I decided to hop in the car and do some exploring in the Milawa area.  I had been before as a student and loved it, but having money  to spend definitely helps enhance the experience.  Stopping by a few boutique wineries along the way, I quickly lost track how much I was spending on the vino.  There are currently four bottles sitting on my shelf, and that's only after I exercised a lot of restraint.  To go along with this wine I bought some cheeses from the famous Milawa Cheese Factory, though I have to say the service was quite lacking.  I tried to ask about all the different cheeses but got very muted responses.  Sure, it was close to closing time, but a helpful hint or two isn't too much to ask is it?  In contrast, Michelle at the Milawa Mustard store (I hope I'm allowed to use names here) was absolutely lovely.  Not knowing a lot about mustards or how to use them, she took her time explaining where the seeds came from and all the different ways to cook with them.  After buying myself a jar of garlic mustard and some quince paste (for the cheese platter, yum!), I wandered outside and saw the amazing herb garden that the mustard store uses for its different mustards.  I commented to Michelle how hard it was to find all the different herbs in town, and without hesitation she started cutting off a whole bunch of different herbs for me, free of charge!  I couldn't believe how helpful this lady was being to this self-confessed cooking novice, but she was genuinely encouraging of my cooking journey and wished me all the best.  Returning home with my gourmet spoils, I could feel my motivation returning to me with the waft of heavy-scented rosemary sitting on my window sill, the delightful acidity of Milawa goat's cheese, the sharp refreshing finish to a bottle of Brown Brother's Chardonnay.

Fettucine with tuna, sun-dried tomatoes, parsley, olive oil and a squeeze of lemon.  Ok, it really isn't anything special.  I just wanted to make something that I could throw together, and canned tuna and sun-dried tomatoes from Woolworth's (not Safeway, as I have been calling it this whole time) seemed like a good idea.  Plus, I really wanted to use the parsley Michelle gave me.  I'm not sure if it made the dish any better, but it definitely added some much needed colour.  The taste itself wasn't too bad.  A little bland perhaps, but that's probably because I forgot to season it.  Lesson number two for today: salt and pepper are your best friends.

That's it for tonight folks!  My deepest deepest apologies for my lengthy absence, but I hope there will be more frequent posting in the future.  I have high hopes for this town and it's produce, and finger-crossed I'll be able to whip up some more tasty treats with my super cool cookware.  Oh and I forgot to mention, I bought myself a Donna Hay cookbook off ebay just last week and will be in receipt of it in a couple of weeks.  I have officially given up on Jamie Oliver and his imprecise, 'cook by feel' recipes.  This amateur cook needs a little more direction at this stage in his development me thinks.

Oh and a final word.  Thank you so very much to Lucy and Adrienne who got me a subscription to Delicious magazine for my birthday!  It is a great read, and the recipes in there look fantastic.  Most are probably still a little out of reach for me, but I'll be keeping them in the bank for later.  Get excited!

Absence Makes My Gut Grow Bigger

Hello again!  Wow, it's been almost two long weeks since my last post, though it feels like it's been forever.  Well, not forever, more like...three weeks.  But I missed you all!  Many tales to tell, many dishes to share, many kilos to shed.  And, spoiler alert, this time I had a few wins!  Hold on to your hats!

Where do I start?  Well, as mentioned a post or two ago, I decided to go back to basics and try my hand at a few simple dishes.  And how much simpler can you get then steak and mash potatoes?

Just look at that mash!  Potatoes, butter, milk, parmesan and splash of olive oil.  I even did that thing where I put the potatoes through a sieve to make it super smooth, and it worked out pretty well.  Smooth, rich, creamy, cheesy mash potatoes.  And an over seasoned steak, but let's not talk about that.  Just focus your eyes on the cool ripples I made with the mash potatoes.  Fancy!

I was feeling pretty chuffed after that dish, so for some reason I decided to try my hand again at risotto.  Actually it's because I still had half a bag of rice and a litre of stock left and I didn't want to waste it all.  A friend of a friend of mine gave me a handy tip that changed everything, and it was so bleeding obvious.  When I make normal rice at home (and by normal rice I mean asian style, in a rice cooker) I always wash my rice first, usually multiple times, to get all the crap and starch off.  It didn't even occur to me that I should wash my risotto rice, but doing that helped get rid of all the starch that was clagging up my risotto.  And the result?

Much much much better.  A very beige looking chicken and mushroom risotto yes, but the actual risotto part was a lot better this time.  Still not great, but a huge improvement over my previous disasters.  And I still have rice and stock left, so expect another risotto dish to pop up in the very near future.

Crap it's been so long since I did all this cooking that I've forgotten what I actually made.  I'm sorting through all my photos to remind myself, and oh my!  How could I have forgotten this dish?  This is the big one!  This is my crowning jewel!  Check it!

Lamb shanks with leek, onion, carrots, garlic cloves and mash potato.  By far the best meal I have made.  Ever.  What's even more surprising is Jamie Oliver finally pulled through for me.  He has an interesting method whereby he wraps up each lamb shank in its own individual foil parcel thing along with all the vegetables, which works very well for single serve people like me.  I even had Greta come over to share it with me and she rated it an 8 out of 10.  Take that Masterchef!

Anyway I think I'll leave it there.  It's 11:30pm, I'm tired, I have work tomorrow, and I'm watching Zombieland, which is pretty good but nowhere near as fun as Shaun of the Dead.  Oh and I watched Inception the other day, which was veeeery good.  At risk of spoiling it for anyone out there, but it almost seemed like a cross between The Matrix and Ocean's Eleven.  With dreams.  Work that out!

So hopefully it won't be too long before my next post.  Don't worry, I've actually been doing plenty of cooking, I'm just too lazy to put them all up here at once.  I've got about...three dishes saved in the bank for next time.  One of them is a risotto.

One Night In Dunkeld

When I first learnt that I was going to be isolated out in greater western Victoria for 10 weeks, the only positive I could perceive was that I would only be a short drive away from Dunkeld.  Situated just south of the picturesque Grampians and with a population of just over 450, this little country town can lay claim to be the home of one of Australia's finest restaurants.  I don't think anything I write could do it justice, so here's a review by The Age:

http://www.royalmail.com.au/Pages/News_and_Reviews.aspx?id=135

My friend Mali and I had been eagerly anticipating a road trip to this gastronomic destination for months, and at one point it seemed we would never make it.  Booked out on Saturday nights till September, somehow we both managed to get a Friday off work to make the trip down for an evening dinner.  The food gods were definitely smiling upon us as we drove through the Grampians on a gorgeous winter's day, a brief stop at Boroka lookout to look out over the incredible flat expanse that is country Victoria.  We arrived in Dunkeld soon after with little ceremony, and after donning ourselves in suitable fine-dining bests we embarked upon a 4 hour gustatory marathon that was a true test of our minds, our senses, and our alcohol tolerance.

A disclaimer before I begin: I am not a foodie.  If  you were expecting a wordy and eloquent review with all the embellishments worthy of Matt Preston, you will be sadly disappointed.  There will be pictures, there will be a description of the dish, there will be a clumsy attempt by me to describe what I thought about it.  If that's not good enough for you, then I'm afraid you're reading the wrong blog.

Offering both an omnivore and vegetarian menu both me and Mali opted for the protein, and, after much debate, decided to splurge on the matched wines.  Perhaps more famous than its food, the Royal Mail houses one of the most incredible wine collections in the country, and we both felt it would be a waste to have come this far and not sample a taste of the good life.  Knowing a thing or two about good wine, Mali spared no expense in choosing the international vintage wines, whereas I opted for the much more restrained local village wines.

From the Menu Omnivore, Royal Mail Hotel, July 9, 2010

Jerusalem artichoke, black truffle, triple cream

with philipponnat reserve rosee brut

A very simple looking starter, and you may be wondering, "Where's the black truffle and triple cream?"  Ingeniously stuffed inside the artichoke, both me and Mali were delighted when cream and truffle flakes oozed unctuously from the cut centre.  A delightful and surprisingly light start to the evening, paired with some lovely pink bubbles to help set mood.

Pacific oyster, snow pea, grapefruit, marine essence
with bannockburn sauvingon blanc

Perhaps Dan Hunter's homage to the Sounds of the Sea, this little dish made me think of an aquarium in a bowl, especially with its 'marine essence' broth (not that I've ever tasted the 'marine essence' of an aquarium before).  A wonderfully textured dish with little crunchy thingies added to the smooth, not-so-slimy oysters.  And another fantastic wine to boot.  A light, fruity, aromatic sauv blanc, probably the best I've ever had, which is not difficult since most of the sauv blancs I buy are from the cheapo section and Liquor Land.

Mackerel, burnt celeriac, mustard, pomegranate

with kracher 'illmitz' pinot gris

This one was a real winner for me.  Actually let me just say now, all of the seafood dishes (and there are a few of them) were all fantastic.  What I really liked about this were the mustards seeds which added just enough to the dish without being too overpowering, and pomegranate is always a nice surprise when they explode in your mouth.  This paired with what I think was the choice wine of the night for me, an Austrian pinot gris that - and I'm not even sure if I'm describing this right - had amazing body and texture.  I really couldn't get enough.

Egg yolk, toasted rye, legumes, yeast
with best's chardonnay

Mali informed me that this was one of the Royal Mail's signature dishes of the season, and at first glance it was hard to see why.  But what appeared to be an egg yolk on a mix of crumbs turned out to be a very intelligent dish that played with a lot of different textures.  Perhaps not the most flavourful dish, but enjoyable nonetheless.  And I couldn't quite put my finger on it till this morning, but the grains reminded me of Kellogg's Just Right cereal.  The wine was again incredible, and given that Best's winery is on the way back to Melbourne from Horsham, you can be sure that I'll be dropping by to pick up a few bottles.

Hapuku, brassicas, chicken skin and broth
with riddoch estate shiraz

The story is getting a bit repetitive now guys.  Great dish, even better wines, etc etc.  What I can say about this though is that I got very excited when I noted the puree tasted like cauliflower, then found out cauliflower comes for the brassica species.  Chalk one up for my tastebuds.  And what the hell is Hapuku?

Eel, beef tendon, kohl rabi, potato
with majella cabernet sauvignon

Over halfway through the menu, and I realise we haven't seen a single piece of meat yet.  But its hard to complain when you get to experience such a range of seafood.  A nice, firmly cooked eel with a very very very soft beef tendon that almost melted away.  And a few little veggie trimmings.  And another glass of wine.  By the way, Mali and I were both very happy at this point, and it's remarkable that I continued to get these still shots with no flash.

Lamb, eggplant in white miso, pine nut, chlorophyll
with best's pinot meunier

Finally we get a decent piece of meat on the plate.  And I know what you're thinking.  "Chlorophyll...that's the stuff in plants, right?"  Yes, your year 7 science teacher didn't lie.  That green smear is indeed chlorophyll, somehow extracted from some plant in some mysterious way, and uhh...it was nice.  What I really loved though was the surprising acidity in the eggplant (I have no idea how) that, when eaten together with the lamb, really gave it something extra.  Another great selection from Best's, and another one to put on the shopping list.

Rhubarb, licorice, almond, citrus

So we moved onto the desserts, and this little dish was to serve as a palate cleanser before we moved onto the good stuff, hence no matching wines.  Which was probably a smart move, since there were some heavy hitting dessert wines still to come.  I'm not a big fan of licorice, but this quite a well balanced dish with the licorice combining with the sourness of the rhubarb to really knock the flavours out of you, and the almonds just gave it all a nice crunchy texture.

Banana in szechuan pepper, coconut and cocoa ice

with crawford river 'nektar' semillon sauvignon

Szechuan pepper?!?  For dessert?!?  Yes you read it right, and to be honest it was delicious.  Wonderfully soft banana with just a hint of spice, and a cocoa ice that gave you the coolness you crave when you have dessert.  It definitely didn't make me miss ice-cream.  And that wine!  As our sommelier said, "I hate desserts, but I love dessert wines."  Actually my wine went beautifully with my dessert, whereas Mali's vintage option was an incredible stand-alone dessert wine, and I would have been happy to have just sipped on that for the rest of the night.

Pistachio, hazelnut, honeycomb, chocolate

with sanchez romate cream sherry

So the final dish was a rich, decadent, indulgent mix of hazelnut ice-cream (yum!), pistachio (yum yum!) and honeycomb and chocolate pieces (yum yum yum!).  OK, maybe not the most sophisticated dessert in the world, but definitely a table pleaser.  The cream sherry was lovely and thick and definitely left a lasting impression.

And that brings me to the end of the night!  10 dishes and 9 choice wines later Mali and I were suitably stuffed and unsuitably inebriated, and settled down with a nice cup of coffee and a few little chocies.  Looking back there were definitely some highlights for me, including the mackerel and lamb dishes.  The food, while perhaps not the most complex or the most flavoursome, was definitely very intelligent, and a lot of the night was spent thinking about all the different components of each dish and how they combined so well to create flavours and textures.

But by far the standout, well above any dish on the menu, was the matching wine selection.  I am so glad Mali convinced me to go for the matched wine option because I have never, and will probably never again, have such amazing wine.  And what added to the whole experience was our entertainingly passionate and expressive sommelier who seemed to ooze sex and sleaze every time he described each of the wines.  I found myself looking forward to his visits every time we had a new wine just so I could enjoy the theatre of his presentations.

In keeping with the whole wine theme, Mali and I ended up buying another bottle of something down the cheaper end of the scale to take back to the hotel and spent the rest of the night having a big D&M. That tends to happen a lot whenever good wine and good company are involved, and the best thing is good wine never touches me the next morning.  Hooray!

So in short, the Royal Mail is definitely worth a trip to the middle of nowheresville.  The food is an experience and the wine is to die for.  Not only that, the surrounds of the Grampians are beautiful, and the days can be spent walking the many trails that wind through this great mountain range.  Unfortunately it was raining when Mali and I were there so we didn't get to see any of it, but hey, there's always next time!

Three Strikes, and I'm Out!

Hi everybody!  Firstly, apologies to all my loyal followers out there (yes all three of them).  It's been a while since I put something up here.  It's not that I haven't been cooking, I've just been extremely lazy (which should come as no surprise to any of you).  There has been many a cold lonely night spent staying up to watch the World Cup as well as a few strums on the guitar, which I am also learning how to play while I'm up here in the Horse-Ham.  And like my cooking, it is not going well.

Oh it was a week of tragic comedy, or comedic tragedy, or maybe just simply tragedy.  I made the bold and ambitious decision to attempt a few risotto recipes from Jamie's demonic cookbook.  Because they all began with the same risotto base, I decided to mix things up a little this week by making risotto three ways.

Prologue: The Risotto Base

Oil, butter, onions (expertly diced, I think I'm getting the hang of it!), white wine, aborio rice, and for some reason Jamie Oliver likes to put celery in his risotto base.  I'm not sure if this is usually done, but what the hell do I know?  I had been told that to get the right consistency for the risotto I needed to:

1. Cook on low heat
2. Add stock slowly, letting it all absorb before adding more
3. Keep stirring

Things seemed to be going well until I started adding the stock to the rice, then it just all clagged up.  It should have been my first clue that this was not going to be a good week.

Act 1: Asparagus, Mint and Lemon Risotto

With my base sort of done (and once again looking nothing like the pictures) I get cracking on my first risotto, which on paper seemed like a simple base with a few chopped asparagus spears and mint with a squeeze of lemon juice.  Being the stupid naive cooking amateur that I am I just did what I was told and threw in the juice of a whole lemon, which turned my risotto into a big, sour, claggy mess.  And by sour I mean eye-tearing, face-wrenching sour.  And by claggy I mean I probably could have used it to wallpaper my flat.  Quite the underwhelming beginning to my risotto adventure, and it wasn't about to get any better.

Act 2: Spinach and Goat's Cheese Risotto

So a day after my lemon risotto fiasco I tried my hand at a spinach risotto.  This one definitely looked interesting in the book, mainly because it was green.  I don't know about you, but green rice excites me.  I make another batch of risotto base, and despite cooking is slower it still turns into a gluggy mass.  And my spinach didn't mix in.  Instead it just kind of sat around the rice, making it more of a green speckled risotto rather than a nice uniform green.  The goat's cheese definitely saved the dish though, giving a nice sourness that cut through what could have been a very bland dish.  Still, yet another textural disaster.

Act 3: Squash and Sage Risotto

I left this one till last because it had a few more components to it.  Squash, cinnamon, chilli and sage.  Unfortunately they don't sell any spices here in Horsham so I had to buy the Masterfood's shakers at Coles.  I'm currently amassing quite a few spices, and yes, it's a good looking rack.  I also had to exclude a few things from the original menu, namely amaretti biscuits (because I don't know what they are) and marscapone cheese (because I didn't want to buy a whole tub of cheese for a recipe that only requires a tablespoon).  Again, I try to tweak a few things while cooking the risotto, and again, it just doesn't work!  Furthermore, my pumpkin doesn't really mix in very well so it becomes more like risotto rice surrounded by lumps of pumpkin rather than a nice smooth orange mixture.  It was not appealing, nor did it taste all that great.

Three times I tried to make risotto, and three times I failed miserably.  What cursed dish is this?  Not only was I making it wrong, I couldn't even figure out what I was doing to screw it up.  I didn't know (and still don't know) whether I was cooking to fast or too slow, too high or too low, adding too much stock or not adding enough, whatever!  I was feeling so disheartened and, I'm afraid, seriously contemplating giving up on this whole cooking venture all together.

After coming home over the weekend and venting my woes to all my friends, I came to realisation that I was trying to reach too far too early on my way to becoming a somewhat competent amateur chef.  Here I was trying to make risottos and giant pots of cannelloni when I can't even poach an egg or mash a potato.  So I'm ditching Jamie Oliver for the time being and going back to basics.  First on the agenda is potatoes, and all the wonderful things you can do with them.  I'm thinking mash potatoes, roast potatoes, baked potatoes, etc.  If you can think of any more let me know and I'll give it a crack.  I may get sick of potatoes by the end of this and will likely end up a big starchy lump of ugly, but at least I'll be able to make some good chats.

Epilogue:  Leftover Squash Soup

As the title implies, I had some squash and stock left over so I decided to make soup.  Jamie didn't have a recipe in his book so I looked one up on Epicurious seemed appealing.  It was then I discovered that soup is VERY difficult to make without a food processor.  I did my best with my spatula but the end result was a thick, lumpy, not-very-good soup, but at least it was tasty.  I may have overdid it with the sage powder though.  I'm just loving the new rack way too much.

That's it guys!  Again very sorry for the delay with the post.  I know how much you were all eagerly waiting to read the next installment of my cooking disasters.  Unfortunately it will be awhile until my next post because I haven't had any time to cook this week.  Some friends came up from Melbourne to visit for no particular reason and we went out to a horrible, horrible, horrible mexican place on the main street.  The combination of 'country town' and 'mexican restaurant' should have rung some alarm bells, but we were enticed by the offer of $6 margaritas.

And tonight was dinner at Greta's place.  Greta, my co-surgical intern here in fabulous Horsham, is also another great cook and let me help her make a bangin' lasagne with apple crumble for dessert.  It was awesome, though I may have eaten one too many serves of the apple crumble.  I may have even had a little vom on the ride home.

In other exciting news I'm going down to The Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld with my good friend Mali, who is also a big foodie.  The Royal Mail is described as one of the best restaurants in regional Australia and we are both looking forward to a 10 course degaustation that will no doubt blow our minds, our taste buds and our wallets.  All the details to follow in my next blog.  Stay tuned!

My Giant Pot of Shame

Oh dear, what a horrible night.  Let me set the scene.

Honeycomb Cannelloni with Vegetable Ragu

It seemed simple enough.  Whip up a vegetable ragu comprising diced carrots, celery, onions, leek, mushrooms and tomatoes, throw it in a pot with dried cannelloni tubes and white sauce and end up with a "Bloomin' tasty" pasta bake.  Why do you lie to me Jamie Oliver!?!?!

It's 6 o'clock.  After finishing work late I finally get home to start cooking.  I'm fairly excited about this dish after thinking about it for the last week.  And to help share in my excitement I invited my fellow intern Joy over for dinner (after promising to help set up her mobile broadband).  Having bought all my ingredients the previous night I lay out all my veggies on the table ready to start slicing the dicing.

Hold up: I don't know how to dice vegetables.

Yes that's right.  In 24 years on this earth (almost 25, only a few more weeks people!) I haven't learnt to dice vegetables properly.  As a consequence, it takes me an hour to dice up 3 carrots, 4 sticks of celery, 1 red onion, 1 leek, 2 cloves of garlic and 5 Portobello mushrooms.

So there I stand in my tiny kitchen surrounded by piles roughly chopped vegetables (sorry guys I forgot to take progress photos),  reading up on the next step, when it dawns on me that it'll take at least 45 minutes for the crap to reduce down to a nice thick ragu.  Shit.  Then I read a little more ahead and saw that it would take another 45 minutes to bake the pasta in the oven.  Fuck.  It's 7 o'clock and dinner is still at least an hour and a half away.  What the hell did I get myself into?

Joy arrives while my ragu is simmering away, and joy oh joy, she's brought Rice Paper Rolls!  We spend the next half hour revisiting my Vietnamese roots, me proudly showing off my pro rice paper rolling skills (prawns on the outside people!).  For a Canadian-Chinese she makes a mean dipping sauce.

I check on my pot periodically and give it a good stir.  After 45 minutes it hasn't really thickened up as much a I'd hoped, and there's a worrying burnt smell emanating from the depths of the pot.  Merde.  Joy (obviously a much better cook than me) starts helping me out while I whip up a quick white sauce made up of cream, creme fraiche, parmesan and anchovies(?).  Meanwhile another Jamie Oliver twist is waiting to screw me over.

The interesting part of this dish, which I forgot to mention before, is that the cannelloni tubes are placed in the pot standing upright, thus giving it a honeycomb appearance.  I somehow managed to procure a pot with the exact dimensions he suggests in the recipe, probably my only success of the night.  We place the tubes in the pot on a bed of wilted spinach then begin to pour the ragu over it.  Disaster.  My shoddily chopped veggies have made the whole thing a little to chunky.  Like fitting crappy square pegs into delicate little round holes, we struggle to get the mix down into the tubes.  However by some miracle it all goes down eventually and, after topping with the white sauce, goes into the oven for the final leg.  It's 9 o'clock.

The kitchen is a mess, like someone came along and vomited diced carrots and celery all over it.  Various sized bowls are stacked up nowhere in particular, knives and chopping boards are hanging precariously over the kitchen bench.  And Joy, being the amazing future wife that she is, starts to wash my dishes!  Despite all my protests (OK, so maybe I didn't protest THAT much) my kitchen is spotless without me having to scrub a single plate.  Essentially, I have invited Joy over tonight to feed me and wash my dishes.  She didn't even bring her laptop over for me to set up her internet!  How useless am I?

Anyway, the pot finally comes out around 10 o'clock.  Joy is long gone so I plate up a serve and sit down to watch the rest of the soccer.  It smells good, it looks like mush, it tastes...not too bad.  Definitely a good, hearty, vegetarian dish.  It was lacking a little kick to make the whole thing pop but that was probably more my doing.  And the texture was just wrong.  I'm not exactly sure how cannelloni is meant to turn out, but I'm sure 'rubbery' isn't right.  The upside is I've made enough pasta to last me the week, so it'll be another while before I put up another dish on this blog.  Let's all be thankful for that!

A couple of days later I was craving a salad (what?) so I decided to try my hand at at Beetroot and Pear Salad with Feta Cheese and Lemon and Oil Dressing.  Thinking ahead this time, I looked up how to matchstick beetroots and 'acquired' some gloves from the hospital so I wouldn't stain my hands.  Smart!  Let's see how it turned out.

It was very...red.  The beets stained all the pear bits so it wasn't as colourful as I would have liked.  I realised there are different coloured beets out there, but not in Horsham.  Also, texture was again a problem, with the pear being all mushy and the beets not quite as crunchy as I thought they would be.  The dressing was nice and the feta really brought everything together.  I still have a mixing bowl full of this stuff so it looks like I'm stuck with it for the next few days.

I suppose the most important thing I've taken out of all this mess is the importance of planning and preparation.  I obviously had no idea how long it would take me to prep and cook my cannelloni, and I really should have diced all my vegetables the night before if I wanted any chance to have dinner at a decent hour.  I suppose from now on I'll have to calculate my prep and cook times (because Jamie Oliver doesn't make those explicit, boo).  Worst case scenario is I call Joy over again to bring me food.  Not such a terrible idea.

Zucchini Fritters Mark II

Home for the long weekend and it was good to catch up with friends over a proper Melbourne latte.  I didn't realise how much I missed good coffee.  The options are fairly limited here in the Horse-Ham.  The cafeteria at work serves up a bland, watery concoction that barely gives me the caffeine hit I so desperately need on those cold country mornings.  I have yet to venture into the town to find a decent cafe but it's definitely on my to-do list.

One of my other projects on this trip was to learn to use my mum's espresso machine, now currently residing in its box on the floor somewhere in the vicinity of my kitchen.  My previous attempts at making a latte at home fell apart into a big frothy mess, with me not knowing how long to run a shot, nor how to properly steam milk.  However with some handy hints from my friend Alvin (yes you!) and video tutorials on Epicurious.com (plug!) I can smell the fresh aromas of single origin beans over the horizon.

But enough about coffee me thinks.  On to the main topic of today's blog.

Returning back to Horsham I realised I had some leftover zucchinis (or courgettes as the Brits call it) in the fridge, as well as the other ingredients I needed for the zucchini fritters.  I sensed a chance for redemption, for victory, zucchini matchsticks dancing teasingly across my eyes.  I determined to do things differently, or more to the point, I decided to follow the recipe.  Changes I made from last time:

• 1 egg only
• Separated the egg white to whip before folding into the mixture
• Less mint
• Cumin

And I have photos!

My pile of zucchini matchsticks.

My whipped egg whites.  I forgot my whisk, so I had to whip these by hand with a fork.  Not too bad!

The Fritter Mixture


And the result?

Much better I would have to say.  The cumin and lemon really added some extra flavour to what could have been another eggy disaster.  I'm not exactly sure what purpose the whipped egg whites had as they just collapsed again when I folded it back into the mixture.  And the fritters were still soggy!  I had imagined these nice, crispy fritters that would resound with a satisfying crunch when I bit into them.  Unfortunately they turned out to be a limp, impotent excuse for a light snack.  What went wrong?  What did I miss out on?  Then I read the recipe again.

 My biggest mistake it seems is that I was meant to leave out the soggy, floury middle bits of the zucchinis, leaving only nice, crispy matchsticks for the fritters.  Probably not the sole reason for my failure, but it may prove to the difference next time I make these.  And I will make these again, mark my words.  These bloody zucchini fritters are my white whale.

It Begin's With Steak

Hello friends! Yes, my much publicised cooking blog (didn't I tell you about it?) has finally come to fruition. Inspired in part by the movie Julie and Julia (...), but largely by my complete inability to do anything in the kitchen (cooking or otherwise), I have taken it upon myself to cook my way through a cookbook. And what better time to do it then in my 20 week working holiday in regional Victoria!

The Town: Horsham, Victoria.

A one street town with 7 pubs and a supposedly fantastic Thai restaurant, which ironically enough is closed for renovations. I am here doing my surgery rotation under the incredibly talented and incredibly fast Mr Campbell, quite literally a Horsham institution.

The Book: Cook With Jamie, By Jamie Oliver.

Yes, he's a media whore, and yes, he has a stupid lisp, but there's no denying the man can cook and he has an infectious enthusiasm for food. This particular book includes not only recipes but also hints about buying and preparing food. Useful for a cooking tragic like me.

The Challenge: Cook, as best I can.

4 days in and I realise that my biggest challenge will be finding the time to shop for food, let alone cook it. My base hours are 7am to 4:30pm, however already this week I've worked 3 evening cover shifts which take me to 8pm. Because of this, it's unlikely I'll have the time to cook my way through the entire book. My aim is to cook at least one main per week, with a nice side dish or salad thrown in there for good measure. Maybe a dessert. I do like dessert.

*************************************************************************************

So here we are. Thursday, June 6th, 2010. I'm sitting at my laptop after a hard day's standing and watching surgeons do things, horrible yet incredible things. I managed to get my afternoon off yesterday and drove into town to do some shopping.

Problem 1: Horsham is not a foodie town. It has a half-decent grocer and some butchers, but mostly I'm going to rely on the goods on offer at Coles or Safeway.

Problem 2: How do you cook for one person? Especially big dishes which say servings for 4? The quantities you buy aren't made for single serve dishes. Why does the world hate us lonely heart's so? I decided to just blow my money and buy big; I'll figure it out later.

Problem 3: I get home and discover my kitchen is quite ill-equipped. 1 pot, 2 pans, 1 small plastic mixing bowl, plus some other odds and ends. No wooden spoons, no whisks, no chopsticks!

But enough whining. Let's cook!

Zucchini Fritters with Chillis and Mint

I'm just gonna skip over this one because it was an absolutely disaster. Too much egg, not enough flavour, and they didn't really hold together. Shame, coz I was really excited about this one.

Fillet Steak with White Beans and Leek

I discover that leeks are easy to slice, and butter and butter beans are awesome. Thrown together with thyme, garlic, parsley, white wine and olive oil, I created a super creamy, super tasty white been and leek thing that doesn't look so great but really pops in the mouth. This one's a winner.

Unfortunately I ruined the dish by overcooking my steak. Stupid Masterchef distracted me :(. Something I learnt online: to know how well your steak is cooked, feel the steak and compare it against the palm muscle at the base of your thumb. With your thumb relaxed, it's rare. With your thumb and 1st finger together, it's medium-rare. Thumb and 2nd finger: medium, and so on. I'm not sure if this actually works, but give it a shot!

As a side note, had a smell of all my ingredients before I threw them all into the pan. The main thing I really wanted to get out of all of this is learning all the smells and flavours of different ingredients. I'm gonna make it a point to smell everything. Everything!

So that's it! My first cooking misadventure. Some early misfires for sure, but the beans are awesome. I'm going home for the long weekend and planning on bringing back some cooking utensils. Hopefully I'll have enough to follow the recipes properly next week! Wish me luck guys.

Now for some cheesy sign off line. Umm...